A History of the Roman World (22 page)

The consolidation of Rome’s confederacy was rudely interrupted by a Gallic invasion which tempted the Samnites and some of the Etruscans to try conclusions with the Romans once again. New hordes of Celts had crossed the Alps and were unsettling their kinsmen in Cisalpine Gaul. One band swept down through Etruria and even invaded Roman territory in 299, but the main body was fighting the Veneti. The Romans hastily tried to block their southern advance by forming an alliance with the Picentes and capturing Umbrian Nequinum where they founded a Latin colony named Narnia. While Rome was thus preoccupied the Samnites made a final bid for freedom and invaded Lucania. One of the consuls of 298, L. Cornelius Scipio Barbatus, captured Taurasia and Cisauna in south-west Samnium, drove back the Samnites, and exacted hostages from the Lucanians. Meantime his colleague, Cn. Fulvius, attacked northern Samnium where he captured Aufidena, though probably not Bovianum.
¹⁰
But while the consuls Q. Fabius Rullianus and P. Decius Mus continued the campaign in Samnium during the next two years and captured Murgantia and Romulea in the east, the Samnites, under the leadership of Gellius Egnatius, conceived the bold plan of cooperating with the northern enemies of Rome in a combined attack. In 296, while the storm was gathering, the Samnites raided the Falernian plain, perhaps to distract attention from the north, but they were driven back by Volumnius, and two maritime colonies of Roman citizens were planted at Minturnae and Sinuessa on the Appian Way; Volumnius himself was recalled to support his colleague
Appius Claudius in southern Etruria. The next year the Romans hurried their full force through Umbria to prevent the Samnites joining forces with the Gauls. They were too late and their advance guard was defeated near Camerinum. The situation was very grave. It remained to face the allied forces of Samnites, Gauls, and perhaps some Umbrians. A great battle was fought at Sentinum, where the heroic sacrifice of the veteran Decius Mus, the skill of Fabius, and the steadiness of the Roman legions broke the forces of the coalition.
¹¹
The disaster of Allia was avenged and the fate of central Italy was sealed. The surviving Gauls and Samnites scattered to their homes, while Fabius marched back through Etruria. The next year the Romans ended the unrest in Etruria by granting a peace for forty years to Volsinii, Perusia and Arretium; as they still had to deal with the Samnites, they were ready to be lenient in Etruria.

But although the coalition was broken and its designer, Gellius Egnatius, lay on the field of Sentinum, the Samnites were far from crushed and succeeded in defeating L. Postumius near Luceria in 294. The Romans were hampered by the visitation of a plague, but in 293 they again took the offensive. The geographical details of the campaign are obscure, but it appears that Sp. Carvilius captured Amiternum to check some Sabine restlessness, while his colleague L. Papirius won a great victory at Aquilonia (Lacedogna) on the Apulian frontier and thus completed the work begun at Sentinum. In the following year a truce was reached with Falerii which had revolted; in 291 L. Postumius stormed Venusia, which controlled the main route from Campania to Apulia, and a large Latin colony was settled there. The Samnites were at last exhausted and peace was re-established in 290. The terms are not preserved, but Rome’s booty was great and the Samnites were mulcted of territory, so that henceforth the Upper and Middle Volturnus replaced the Liris as the dividing line between Rome and Samnium. Although the Samnite League apparently was allowed to continue in existence, the Samnites were no longer friends but ‘allies’, subject to Rome’s demands for troops and obedience in foreign policy. In this same year, 290, M’. Curius Dentatus marched through the territory of the Sabines who were still independent, though doubtless they had become largely Romanized. The whole population was granted
civitas sine suffragio
and enrolled in the Roman state; not long afterwards it received full franchise. A few square miles of the territory of the Praetuttii, an offshoot of the Sabines, was annexed; a Latin colony was established at Hadria to guard the coast road along the Adriatic.

After a few years of peace the Gauls again gave trouble. The Senones crossed the Apennines and besieged Etruscan Arretium which remained faithful to its alliance with Rome. Caecilius Metellus tried to relieve Arretium and met his death in a battle which cost the Romans some 13,000 men (284). This grave disaster encouraged Etruscan Vulci and Volsinii to revolt, while some Samnites
and Lucanians in the south followed suit. But though the Romans had to face danger from several directions, their enemies could not unite to form another coalition. After the Senones had murdered some Roman ambassadors, M’. Curius Dentatus marched into the
ager Galliens
and drove them out with merciless vigour.
¹²
Their land was annexed and a Roman colony was settled at Sena on the Adriatic. In 283 the Boii took up the cudgels laid down by their kinsmen and joined the Etruscan cities in their revolt. On their southward march they were defeated by Cornelius Dolabella at Lake Vadimo, only fifty miles from Rome. The next year a similar attempt ended in a similar disaster near Populonia; after this the Boii remained quiet for fifty years. Volsinii and Vulci held out till 280 when they were defeated, deprived of part of their territory and enrolled as Rome’s allies. It is possible that the Etruscan towns of Tarquinii, Rusellae, Vetulonia, Populonia, and Volaterrae had participated in the revolt and were now coerced into alliance with Rome. But no sooner were the Gauls defeated and the Etruscans pacified than the Romans were forced to turn to southern Italy where the Samnites and Lucanians were restless, where Thurii appealed for Rome’s help and where in 280 the Greek adventurer, Pyrrhus, King of Epirus, had landed.

The sun of Hellenism was slowly sinking in the west. The Greek cities in southern Italy had long suffered at the hands of the Sabellic Lucanians and Bruttians, who were receiving the final thrust of that pressure of peoples which began beyond the Alps. Unwilling, as always, to cooperate voluntarily, and not forced into a semblance of unity by the strong hand of a tyrant, many Italiote cities had succumbed to the natives. The southernmost cities, of which Tarentum was the strongest thanks to its trade with the neighbouring hinterland and with Greece, had maintained their ground by hiring professional soldiers from Greece. Archidamus of Sparta had been called in and involuntarily did Rome the service of distracting the attention of the Samnites during the Latin revolt before he fell fighting in 338. Soon afterwards, with the help of Alexander the Molossian, King of Epirus and brother-in-law of Alexander the Great, the Tarentines tried to establish a claim to the downlands of Apulia. It was perhaps at this time that they made a treaty with Rome, by which Roman warships were not to sail east of the Lacinian promontory, near Croton; the Romans were not yet particularly interested in Apulia or the south.
¹³
Alexander’s ambitions, which soon outran the desires of his Tarentine employers, were quenched by his death in 330. Rome’s alliance with Naples in 327 must have attracted the notice of the southern Greeks, while her operations in Apulia during the Second Samnite War, especially the founding of a colony at Luceria, irritated the Tarentines, who were probably forced to resign
their claims to northern Apulia. Renewed attacks by the Lucanians induced the Tarentines to call in Cleonymus of Sparta in 303; his personal ambitions soon caused his dismissal after a defeat by the barbarians, who were probably not supported by the Romans as tradition relates. The intervention of Agathocles of Syracuse temporarily checked the Bruttians (
c.
298–295), but more significant was the founding of a Latin colony at Venusia in 291.
¹⁴
The smaller Greek cities began to look for help from the Romans, who though allied to the Lucanians had overthrown the Samnites, rather than from Tarentum or from Agathocles, whose early brilliance had declined and whose empire collapsed at his death in 289.

About 285 Thurii appealed to the Romans for help against the Lucanians. Some aid was apparently given, in return for which a Roman tribune was honoured with a golden crown. In 282 Thurii again appealed and the Romans sent C. Fabricius with a consular army to drive back the Lucanians and to garrison Thurii. Rhegium, Locri and perhaps Croton also availed themselves of Rome’s protection. Rome was thus suddenly forced to define her policy towards southern Italy. After due deliberation she decided to intervene rather than to abandon the Greek cities to the onslaughts of her Lucanian allies; this decision was due perhaps to the influence of the younger plebeian leaders whose power was increased by the recent political victory of the plebs in 287.
¹⁵
But although it was becoming increasingly evident that the Senate must now think in terms of Italy as a whole and extend the range of its policy, it is equally true that the Romans liked quiet neighbours. Alexander of Epirus had advanced as far as Paestum and Agathocles had caused considerable trouble; Rome would be glad to end the need for these foreign
condottieri
. Also the infant Roman fleet might find Thurii a useful station now that Rome had established colonies on the Adriatic. Finally, as the Lucanians had become restless when the Gauls attacked Rome’s northern frontier, the Romans would welcome the opportunity of punishing them. Thus all considerations forced Rome to undertake the cause of Thurii.

The Tarentines, who had done little to justify their hegemony among the Italiotes, replied by attacking ten Roman ships which appeared off their harbour; they sank four, captured another and scattered the rest. They followed up this unprovoked attack by marching to Thurii, driving out the Roman garrison and sacking the town. Roman envoys, who demanded very moderate reparations, were insulted. War was forced on the Romans; the consul L. Aemilius Barbula was sent to attack Tarentum if it still refused to make redress (281). The Tarentines, who had already summoned the help of Pyrrhus, King of Epirus, were on the point of capitulating when the King’s envoy, Cineas, arrived and turned the scales in favour of war. The cause of this remarkable outburst is perhaps found in the party politics of Tarentum. It is true that by sailing east of the Lacinian promontory the Romans had broken
their formal treaty; but as this was old and had been made with King Alexander it might well be considered to have been abrogated. The Roman fleet may have been innocently cruising round on a tour of inspection or on its way to the new Adriatic colonies, but more probably it had come to offer moral if not physical support to the pro-Roman oligarchs in Tarentum. The Tarentine democrats may thus have had good cause to distrust its presence and resorted to violence in the expectation of help from Pyrrhus. Rome’s quarrel with Tarentum would have soon been over and have had little significance, had not Pyrrhus answered the appeal.

Pyrrhus, the chivalrous king of Epirus, was quite ready to turn his back on the troubled waters of Hellenistic politics and to seek fresh adventures in the west at the call of Tarentum. Being the son-in-law of Agathocles and also a relative of Alexander the Great, this Hellenistic prince may well have dreamed of building up an empire in the west. Courageous and ambitious, a skilful soldier and an inspiring leader, he could count on the help of the Samnites, Lucanians, Bruttians, and Messapians together with the Greek cities of Tarentum, Metapontum and Heraclea, in a crusade against Rome. And perhaps he might even hope to shake the Italian confederacy, especially as Rome was distracted on her northern front, where the Gauls had only recently been defeated and some Etruscan cities were still resisting. Beguiled by his ambitions, he landed at Tarentum with a force of 25,000 professional soldiers and twenty elephants (280). Profiting by the experience of his predecessor Alexander the Molossian, he demanded that the Tarentines should hand over their citadel and give him complete control for the duration of the war; in return he promised to remain in Italy no longer than was necessary. He utilized his new powers to force the Tarentines to transfer their attention from the theatres and gymnasium to the parade ground.
¹⁶

The Romans hastened to the attack, perhaps without full realization of the gravity of the situation. In the early summer of 280 one consul was busy beating out the smouldering resistance in Etruria, while his colleague, Valerius Laevinus, marched south to meet Pyrrhus in battle near Heraclea. The opposing forces were about numerically equal, but the citizen militia of Rome and her allies were face to face with a first-class professional Hellenistic army. The Roman legion met the Macedonian phalanx for the first time. The tactics employed by Pyrrhus were essentially similar to those of Alexander and Hannibal. He sought to hold or wear down the Roman infantry with the serried ranks of his phalanx, which presented to the short swords of the legionaries a hedge of projecting spearheads, almost as impenetrable as a barbed-wire entanglement; at the same time his elephants and cavalry not
only prevented his line from being outflanked but also broke the enemy’s wings and turned their flanks instead. So it fell out at Heraclea. The Romans were terrified by their first encounter in battle with elephants, which untrained horses will not face. Their cavalry was driven back, and leaving 7,000 men on the field they fled to Venusia, where Aemilius, a consul of the previous year, was still stationed. But Pyrrhus, whose resources were far more limited than those of his foe, lost 4,000 men in this ‘Pyrrhic’ victory, though his cause was strengthened by the support of the Lucanians and Samnites and by the adhesion of Croton and Locri; Rhegium would have followed suit, but for the energy of the officer commanding the garrison troops.

Pyrrhus followed up his victory by a dash towards Rome, not hoping to storm the city, but perhaps anticipating like Hannibal later that the allies of Rome would rally to his cause; he may also have wished to join forces with the Etruscans. But he was disappointed. Capua and Naples shut their gates against him; Laevinus and Aemilius hung on his heels; the Latins gave no sign of disaffection; and the two legions in Etruria, having finished their task, were recalled to block his advance. When forty miles from Rome he turned back to Tarentum, while his army retired to winter quarters in Campania. In the autumn he received a Roman embassy under Fabricius, who had come to negotiate for the return of prisoners. Having received proof of the solidarity of Rome’s confederacy Pyrrhus was ready to treat and sent Cineas back to Rome with Fabricius, together with some of the prisoners on parole. He offered to restore all prisoners and to end the war, if the Romans would make peace with Tarentum, grant autonomy to the Greeks, and return all territory conquered from the Lucanians and Samnites. These terms would have severely limited the spread of Roman interests in the south and have created a Tarentine domination there. The offer was accompanied by lavish presents to the leading senators who, unaccustomed to the ways of Hellenistic diplomacy, rejected the gifts as bribes. A party in Rome favoured peace, but it was soon silenced by the oratory of the blind old censor, Appius Claudius, who rebuked the Senate for discussing terms while a victorious enemy was still on Italian soil. Pyrrhus must again try the hazard of war.
¹⁷

Having failed in Campania, Pyrrhus threatened the Roman strongholds of Luceria and Venusia in Apulia and perhaps hoped to press up the Adriatic coast and detach the northern Samnites. His forces, now strengthened by contingents of Samnites and Lucanians, were about equal to the two consular armies, which were concentrated near Venusia in 279 to check his advance. He met the Romans in a second pitched battle not far from Asculum on rough ground which enabled the legionaries to resist his phalanx for a whole day. The next morning Pyrrhus drew up his troops on more level ground where the phalanx forced back the Roman line, which was rolled up by an elephant charge. The Romans avoided complete disaster by regaining their
camp, and though they had lost one consul and 6,000 men Pyrrhus left 3,500 men on the field. He was, however, prevented from following up this victory by news from Greece and Sicily which made him eager to conclude peace in Italy.

A Celtic invasion of Macedonia offered Pyrrhus the opportunity of playing the role of champion of Greece with the chance of gaining the Macedonian throne, while the Syracusans sent envoys begging him to save them from the Carthaginians who were within an ace of winning the whole of Sicily. Unable to serve the cause of Hellenism in two countries at once, Pyrrhus chose the Sicilian venture and tried to rid himself of his Italian commitments by reaching terms with Fabricius who, as consul for 278, had led his troops into Campania; perhaps Pyrrhus claimed no more than immunity for Tarentum. Carthage, however, was alive to the desirability of keeping Pyrrhus engaged in Italy and sent Mago with 120 warships to remind Rome of their old alliance and to offer help against Pyrrhus. When the Romans abruptly declined this aid, Mago sailed off to visit Pyrrhus; he perhaps promised to arrange peace between Rome and the king, so that the latter would be free to return to Greece, while he threatened to wreck negotiations with Rome if Pyrrhus persisted in crossing to Sicily. His offer was rejected, and Mago returned to Rome, where he obtained an agreement which kept Rome from making peace. No defensive alliance was struck, but it was arranged that if they made an agreement against Pyrrhus, it should be with the stipulation that it should be lawful to render mutual aid in whichever country Pyrrhus attacked, i.e. a temporary suspension of the restrictions imposed by a treaty of 306 (p. 124). Whichever party might need help, Carthage was to provide ships for transport or war, and to aid Rome by sea, though she was not obliged to land troops against her will. Rome thus gained money to finance the war and a fleet to blockade Tarentum, while if Pyrrhus crossed to Sicily she was not obliged to help Carthage there. His object achieved, Mago sailed off to Syracuse, leaving
en route
five hundred Roman soldiers to strengthen the garrison at Rhegium. Pyrrhus meanwhile had retired to Tarentum where he left half his troops to defend his allies; with the rest he set sail for Sicily in the autumn of 278.
¹⁸

During Pyrrhus’ absence the Romans gradually forced the Samnites, Lucanians and Bruttians into submission; whether they were equally successful against the Italiote Greeks is more doubtful. It is recorded that Fabricius won over Heraclea in 278, that Locri revolted and Croton was captured in 277, and that the Campanian garrison of Rhegium seized Croton for themselves. After a meteoric career in Sicily, Pyrrhus decided to return to Italy; if he failed to win a great victory, which alone could restore his fortunes, he would proceed to Greece. On crossing from Sicily late in 276 he was defeated by the Punic fleet in an engagement which must have confirmed his decision to leave the west.
¹⁹
He then recaptured Locri and Croton (if it is
admitted that he had ever lost them). After pillaging the temple treasure of Persephone at Locri, to the superstitious horror of the Greeks, he reached Tarentum. In 275 he marched northwards with his diminished forces on a brilliantly-conceived campaign, which ended in an inglorious rearguard action. One of the consuls, Manius Curius, was near Malventum (the future Beneventum), the other was posted in Lucania. Anticipating the junction of the two armies Pyrrhus hastily struck at Curius, but failed to reach his objective in a night surprise. The Romans repelled his attack in open battle and captured several of his elephants.
²⁰
Before he was caught between the two Roman armies Pyrrhus withdrew to Tarentum. There he left some troops to encourage the Italiote allies whom he had failed; with the rest of his army he set sail for Greece. In the following year he withdrew his force, except for a garrison, from Tarentum, and two years later he was killed in street-fighting at Argos by a tile thrown by a woman from a house-top. His Sicilian campaign had prevented the island from becoming a Carthaginian province, while his whirlwind career in Italy had even more far-reaching effects. It sealed the fate of the Italiote Greeks, it demonstrated the rock-like solidarity of the Roman confederacy, against which Pyrrhus had flung his professional soldiers in vain, and it showed the whole Hellenistic world that the unknown barbarians of central Italy were in fact a great military and imperial state, with which Ptolemy II of Egypt now established diplomatic relations and
amicitia
(273).